Communism and China?

No, they were debatably a Socialist Party under Mao they definitely were not during and after Deng Xiaopeng.

I would debate that they still have some elements of the old Socialist Party as they stil have a public sector and still support 5-year plans.

I think the burden of proof is on those who assert that China has ever been meaningfully socialist. After the 1949 revolution, even under Mao, the bourgeoisie continued to exist. Mao asserted the "national bourgeoisie" could help in the construction of socialism:

"In our country, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie comes under the category of contradictions among the people. By and large, the class struggle between the two is a class struggle within the ranks of the people, because the Chinese national bourgeoisie has a dual character. In the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, it had both a revolutionary and a conciliationist side to its character. In the period of the socialist revolution, exploitation of the working class for profit constitutes one side of the character of the national bourgeoisie, while its support of the Constitution and its willingness to accept socialist transformation constitute the other. The national bourgeoisie differs from the imperialists, the landlords and the bureaucrat-capitalists. The contradiction between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is one between exploiter and exploited, and is by nature antagonistic. But in the concrete conditions of China, this antagonistic contradiction between the two classes, if properly handled, can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and be resolved by peaceful methods. However, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie will change into a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy if we do not handle it properly and do not follow the policy of uniting with, criticizing and educating the national bourgeoisie, or if the national bourgeoisie does not accept this policy of ours."

("On The Correct Handling Of Contradictions Among The People" - February 1957)

Mao's position was very similar to that of Bukharin who believed that exploiting classes could "grow into" socialism. Obviously, this position was rejected by Stalin and the CPSU on the grounds that it was erroneous and counter-revolutionary.

In my opinion, the Chinese Revolution stalled at the bourgeois-democratic phase. This does not negate the fundamentally progressive nature of the revolution (which was both anti-imperialist and anti-feudal) but there is no meaningful evidence to suggest that it ever definitively passed-over into the socialist revolution. Nevertheless, the Chinese leadership continued to use Marxist-Leninist language in justifying its policies, in order to placate its working-class and in order to maintain the support of the Soviet Union (until the Sino-Soviet Split) and the international communist movement.

I was wondering your opinions on the PRC. Do you still consider it to be communist? Why do you support it, or why are you against it?

It is not communist. It was socialist for a period of time, but after the tumultuous period of the end of the cultural revolution and post-cultural revolution, it turned drastically to a revisionist capitalist road.

I would debate that they still have some elements of the old Socialist Party as they stil have a public sector and still support 5-year plans.

The party uses socialist rhetoric and still mentions Marxism-Leninism, but socialism and Marxism are not taught in the schools. You don't read Marx, Lenin, and Mao in school unless you choose to study it at the university level. The party does have a left-wing faction. Some people support returning to the Mao-era economic model. Some say privatization is going too far and state-control of the economy needs to be strengthened. It's about half and half: 50% of the economy is privatized, 50% is state-owned and run. They do have their 5-year-plans and there is still a central economy planning committee.

I think the burden of proof is on those who assert that China has ever been meaningfully socialist. After the 1949 revolution, even under Mao, the bourgeoisie continued to exist. Mao asserted the "national bourgeoisie" could help in the construction of socialism:

"In our country, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie comes under the category of contradictions among the people. By and large, the class struggle between the two is a class struggle within the ranks of the people, because the Chinese national bourgeoisie has a dual character. In the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, it had both a revolutionary and a conciliationist side to its character. In the period of the socialist revolution, exploitation of the working class for profit constitutes one side of the character of the national bourgeoisie, while its support of the Constitution and its willingness to accept socialist transformation constitute the other. The national bourgeoisie differs from the imperialists, the landlords and the bureaucrat-capitalists. The contradiction between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is one between exploiter and exploited, and is by nature antagonistic. But in the concrete conditions of China, this antagonistic contradiction between the two classes, if properly handled, can be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and be resolved by peaceful methods. However, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie will change into a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy if we do not handle it properly and do not follow the policy of uniting with, criticizing and educating the national bourgeoisie, or if the national bourgeoisie does not accept this policy of ours."

("On The Correct Handling Of Contradictions Among The People" - February 1957)

Mao's position was very similar to that of Bukharin who believed that exploiting classes could "grow into" socialism. Obviously, this position was rejected by Stalin and the CPSU on the grounds that it was erroneous and counter-revolutionary.

In my opinion, the Chinese Revolution stalled at the bourgeois-democratic phase. This does not negate the fundamentally progressive nature of the revolution (which was both anti-imperialist and anti-feudal) but there is no meaningful evidence to suggest that it ever definitively passed-over into the socialist revolution. Nevertheless, the Chinese leadership continued to use Marxist-Leninist language in justifying its policies, in order to placate its working-class and in order to maintain the support of the Soviet Union (until the Sino-Soviet Split) and the international communist movement.

The Chinese socialist revolution was coming out of a bourgeois-democratic revolution and a civil war between the reactionary bourgeoisie who wanted to preserve a bourgeois-democratic state and the revolutionary socialists and communists. The revolution was also dealing with defeating old feudalistic elements of society and the economy. There were revolutionary and progressive bourgeoisie who ended up siding with the communists during the civil war. Many of these were political activists for democracy in China and they saw that the CCP was the democratic, progressive party and not the KMT. In fact, the CCP and KMT intensely battled to win the support of some other political groups in China. Many of those advocating democracy and an end to the old oppressive imperial, monarchical, feudal system and society joined the CCP in their new government. The CCP under Mao's leadership employed the mass line and criticism and self-criticism at all levels of the government, party, and military. It also put industrial laborers in command of their workplaces and rural laborers in charge of their farms and communes. The PRC truly had worker's democracy and control and a strict dictatorship over the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. The cultural revolution also intensely eliminated old feudal and bourgeois elements of society and got rid of a lot of bourgeois elements in the party, military, and government.

I don't quite see how anyone with a half decent understanding of communism could think that that's what China is, because China is so blatantly not that, what with the capitalism etc.

I don't quite see how anyone with a half decent understanding of communism could think that that's what China is, because China is so blatantly not that, what with the capitalism etc.

That mean you would support the fall the People's Republic of China just like on the Trotsky support the fall of the Soviet Union? Yes I agree that they are not communist, but their hell not capitalist either. As we have words like socialism for the nice middle ground between the robber in America, and those trying to put it right in China.

The party uses socialist rhetoric and still mentions Marxism-Leninism, but socialism and Marxism are not taught in the schools. You don't read Marx, Lenin, and Mao in school unless you choose to study it at the university level. The party does have a left-wing faction. Some people support returning to the Mao-era economic model. Some say privatization is going too far and state-control of the economy needs to be strengthened. It's about half and half: 50% of the economy is privatized, 50% is state-owned and run. They do have their 5-year-plans and there is still a central economy planning committee.

Today don't teach a lot of Adam Smith's and Ronald Reagan in school either doesn't mean that you nice isn't right wing nation. At least they do have a state-owned sector, here would only note that even looks like. Our government can plan ahead six months, let alone have a five-year plan. We have no economic planning committee, that's why our government can't even produce a balanced budget. Instead of attacking China as non-socialist we should be helping the left-wing faction moved to the commonest age.

Today don't teach a lot of Adam Smith's and Ronald Reagan in school either doesn't mean that you nice isn't right wing nation. At least they do have a state-owned sector, here would only note that even looks like. Our government can plan ahead six months, let alone have a five-year plan. We have no economic planning committee, that's why our government can't even produce a balanced budget. Instead of attacking China as non-socialist we should be helping the left-wing faction moved to the commonest age.

My high school teachers did. But that's because I went to a Roman Catholic school in one of the most strictly conservative areas in the U.S. And it's interesting to note that the U.S. government has a pretty long history of state ownership and economic guiding. The entire U.S. agricultural industry is supported by government subsidies. And the government sold land in the West to any settlers who could get to it and drive off Native Americans. The government also gave money to railroad companies as an incentive to build fast and cheaply.

That's how I largely feel about it. I don't buy most American attacks against China (that it's a dictatorship and just building up until it can try to take over the U.S.). China still has class struggle and I support the struggles of industrial and agricultural workers in China over the Chinese bourgeoisie. The party also has line struggles and many Chinese artists have been showing a support for the cultural revolution mindset and the Mao-days.

I believe China to still be socialist, though in a major class struggle between the left-wing (pro-Mao, pro-socialist) bloc and the right-wing (anti-Mao, pro-capitalist) bloc. I believe most here would appreciate this article below. It gives off a pretty sober Marxist analysis on China:

http://norkhosq.net/?p=4552

http://norkhosq.net/?p=4550

If so, then the left-wing bloc has been getting its ass kicked for the past 30+ years.

I think the whole "bloc" mentality is fairly idealist. You won't be seeing some heirs of actual Maoism arise in a coup and somehow overthrow not only the entire state apparatus (which is dominated every which way by right-wingers of various shades) but to somehow gain the support of the working-class and peasantry to make this possible.

If so, then the left-wing bloc has been getting its ass kicked for the past 30+ years.

Didn't this block die with Jiang Qing? Or even before? Honestly I doubt that such block would be capable even of acting as somekind of opposition, much less of it becoming a real revolutionary current. Though there are probably Pro-Mao individuals on the CCP, they are certainly a tiny minority of veterans and perhaps some very young members not directly beneffited by the current economic policies, and just by the fact that they would supposedly still be members of the CCP, shows that they would still hold an illusion of their party as being a Communist Party, operating through Democratic-Centralist principles and capable of correcting its own line.

Didn't this block die with Jiang Qing? Or even before? Honestly I doubt that such block would be capable even of acting as somekind of opposition, much less of it becoming a real revolutionary current. Though there are probably Pro-Mao individuals on the CCP, they are certainly a tiny minority of veterans and perhaps some very young members not directly beneffited by the current economic policies, and just by the fact that they would supposedly still be members of the CCP, shows that they would still hold an illusion of their party as being a Communist Party, operating through Democratic-Centralist principles and capable of correcting its own line.

Yes. I was being condescending. There is a small left-wing faction of the CCP. Some of them claim to want to revive Maoism, but as Ismail pointed out, there number is so small and the rightists have taken over to such a degree in every level of society and the country has become so marketized and capitalized that their influence is so minute. The mass line has been abandoned and criticism and self-criticism are not a part of official party doctrine anymore. People are encouraged to look down on Mao nowadays. There are uprisings and struggles within the country constantly, and we should show solidarity with the toiling peasants and workers who occupy villages and stage strikes and demonstrations against the capitalists and corrupt government officials.

Yes. I was being condescending.

I know, I was just developing my point over what said.

Are there any other Real Communist Parties in China? I know that there are some to the left of the ruling CCP but not left-wing enough to be called proper Marxists.

When I actually talk to people who have been in China, whose wives are CCP members, who have debated with Chinese professors, etc. they take all this stuff about "left factions" and "China is still socialist" and such and literally laugh at it, if not have disbelief.

Here's an example of the glorious socialist health care system in modern-day China:

Person: Healthcare here is basically, you purchase a health insurance card
Person: And each month you pay a certain amount, and they put some of that money onto your health insurance card
Ismail: so it's like social security basically?
Person: Yeah, only it's optional
Person: And if you don't pay you just do everything out of pocket
Person: Which is what most people do
Person: If you have a good job, like a govt job, they just pay your health insurance card payment each month
Ismail: and if you're nothing you get basically no health care?
Person: Yeah, exactly
Ismail: glorious "socialism"
Person: Tons of people never go to the doctor, even though by my standards of America, health care here is ridiculously cheap
Person: Like it's less than $1 for a doctor's visit
Person: And medicine is way cheaper too
[...]
Person: Also there's still a huge reliance and trust in Chinese medicine
Person: Because it has "no side effects"
Ismail: glorious attempts to raise the socialist and scientific consciousness of the Chinese masses
Person: And the government promotes this because it's tied up with nationalism
Person: So you have Chinese medicine colleges spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year doing "research" where like 95% of the results prove that their medicine does exactly what they say it does, or else wasting it trying to prove like, the existence of Qi energy or Lay Lines in your body
Person: As opposed to real clinical medical trials where only like 2-3% of medicine tested has any useful effect
Person: There's even a huge, HUGE direct sales of Chinese medicine industry
Person: Where people prey on the elderly and the stupid
Person: My wife's grandma is a doctor and she wasted 1000 dollars buying a year's supply of some medicine we looked up and it's banned in Beijing for being useless

And on the glorious "left-wing bloc" that supposedly exists:
Person: Then you have people like Liu Xiabo, the "Communist" leader of Chongqing
Person: So he puts old patriotic "Red" songs on TV
Person: And makes people wear little red armbands
Person: And his 21 year old son drives a Ferrari
Person: This guy is credited as leading a socialist revival in his city
Person: It's ridiculous

and:
Person: Chinese workers are the most put upon, shit upon, people I've ever met
Person: And what amazes me is that they put up with it

and when talking to some students:
Person: I tell them about exploitation and common things that could be done to them
Person: Like withholding wages, free labor
Person: And I tell them it's bullshit and they shouldn't put up with it, and before they get a job, they should find someone who works there and ask them about it
Person: But Chinese society is so competitive
Person: People will take awful jobs just to get experience

Interesting, Ismail. I have a few Chinese friends myself and every one I've talked to had all the views that I expected the CCP would be pushing these days. They all looked down on Mao for everything except for things like pushing for a single, simplified written language for all the Chinese to understand regardless of dialect and for pushing the Mandarin dialect (interestingly he had a very heavy Xiang accent) and for unifying all the different Chinese ethnic groups into one country. And they look more highly on Deng, yet they look down on the current leadership. It is true that Chinese society is very competitive these days, as is expected when you try combine a sort of capitalist "American dream" to a country with a lot of impoverished people.

Worth reading, as is his book on Land reform. Many lies about China, myths too, a useful writer, who casts a down to earth eye, on momentous times.

This review is from: Through a Glass Darkly: American Views of the Chinese Revolution (Paperback) William podmore reviewer.

This fine study is William Hinton's last book. Hinton, a farmer from Vermont, was born in 1919 and died in 2004. He wrote many books, including Fanshen, the classic account of land reform in China.

In Part 1 he tells the story of the 1950s land reform, in Part 2 he details the counter-revolution that restored the rule of the household economy in rural areas. In Part 3 he studies culture and in Part 4 he explores morality, the famine and class struggle.

The book is also a running commentary on the biases and lies of the book Chinese village, socialist state, by Edward Friedman, Paul Pickowicz and Mark Selden, published by Yale University Press in 1991. Hinton also details the biases of John Fairbank, the Harvard history professor who is widely credited with creating the field of modern Chinese studies in the USA.

Hinton observes that from 1954 to 1983, China's economy grew at 7-8 per cent a year (except in the flood and drought years of 1959-61). Grain production more than doubled. With Mao's leadership, the Chinese people worked for general prosperity, not for individual enrichment.

Hinton shows the dire effects of Deng Xiaoping's counter-revolution, which broke up collective agriculture, restored the household economy, fostered private enterprise and promoted free markets. He also shows the resulting drop in women's status.

As Hinton points out, the ruling class's big lie is that There Is No Alternative. To establish this lie, they have to trash socialism's record and demonise Stalin and Mao.

Hinton backs not leftist, `activist' demands for abstract justice or absolute equality, but the development of production. The industrial rebuilding of the country is the goal - only this can solve real problems of livelihood. He shows that we must work, not for ideals, but for what we need for material advance.

Many Reasons.
One is:
They allow businesses like GM, or EG, and others.

I do not think that modern China is socialist.(Of course it is not communist.)

man fuck the CCP, top officials are either multimillionaires or their sons/daughters are multimillionaire CEOs. How can any communist claim China is socialist when the top leadership is whoring out the working class to foreign capital?

If there were another socialist revolution, all these multimillionaire CCP officials and their brats will be high tailing it to the West with their stolen loot.

Lies from start to finish, 8 Mar 2012

This review is from: Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 (Paperback)
China's mortality during the Great Leap Forward - 24/1000 - was the same as India's, Pakistan's, and Indonesia's in 1960: India 24/1000, Indonesia 23/1000, Pakistan 23/1000. This was much less than China's 1949 figure (38/1000) and less than that of India's at the end of British rule (28/1000).
Frank Dikotter adopted 10/1000 as a `normal' yearly death rate for China, and claims this as the figure for China in 1957. Deaths above this he regards as `excess' deaths. But 10/1000 was the mortality in the USA, Britain and France in 1960. Dikotter's claims imply that China reduced mortality from 38/1000 in 1949 to 10/1000 in 1957. India only reduced mortality from 28 to 23/1000, and Indonesia 26 to 23/1000 over the same period. So if Dikotter accepts a 10/1000 mortality rate for China in 1957, then he has to accept that the communists reduced mortality from 38/1000 to 10/1000 during their first eight years, thereby saving tens of millions of lives. This would have been the most dramatic, incredible reduction in mortality in human history.
If Mao is to be condemned as a killer for presiding over a mortality rate of maximum 27/1000 say in 1960 (the worst year of the great leap forward), what do you call Churchill and other British rulers for consistently presiding over mortality rates of over 30/1000 during all the years of the British Raj? Note also that at no stage in the history of the PRC were mortality rates actually worse than any before 1949.
That is why in the Maoist period China's population growth was about four times as fast as in the three decades leading up to 1949. In fact the fastest period of population growth in China's history happened under Mao.
As Amartya Sen pointed out, four million more people died in India than in China in each year between 1958 and 1961.

Joseph Ball pointed out, "Mao made clear that, from the start, the policies of the Great Leap Forward were about China developing a more independent economic policy. China's alternative to reliance on the USSR was a program for developing agriculture alongside the development of industry. In so doing, Mao wanted to use the resources that China could muster in abundance-labour and popular enthusiasm. The use of these resources would make up for the lack of capital and advanced technology.
"Although problems and reversals occurred in the Great Leap Forward, it is fair to say that it had a very important role in the ongoing development of agriculture. Measures such as water conservancy and irrigation allowed for sustained increases in agricultural production, once the period of bad harvests was over. They also helped the countryside to deal with the problem of drought. Flood defenses were also developed. Terracing helped gradually increase the amount of cultivated area.
"Industrial development was carried out under the slogan of `walking on two legs'. This meant the development of small and medium scale rural industry alongside the development of heavy industry. As well as the steel furnaces, many other workshops and factories were opened in the countryside. The idea was that rural industry would meet the needs of the local population. Rural workshops supported efforts by the communes to modernize agricultural work methods. Rural workshops were very effective in providing the communes with fertilizer, tools, other agricultural equipment and cement (needed for water conservation schemes). ... Rural industry established during the Great Leap Forward used labour-intensive rather than capital-intensive methods. As they were serving local needs, they were not dependent on the development of an expensive nation-wide infrastructure of road and rail to transport the finished goods."

Was Mao Really a Monster?: The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday's "Mao: The Unknown Story" (Paperback) Reviewed by William Podmore

Gregor Benton, Professor of Chinese History at Cardiff University, and Lin Chun, senior lecturer in Comparative Politics at the LSE, have produced this excellent collection of 14 reviews of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's Mao: The Unknown Story.

The reviews are by internationally respected specialists in modern Chinese history, mostly previously published in scholarly journals. The reviewers all explicitly engage with the earlier writings on Mao's life, unlike Chang and Halliday who write as if nobody had ever researched Mao's life before.
Chang and Halliday's book is a Nazi-style hymn of hate against China and Mao. The reviewers show that the little that is good in the book is not original and what is original is not good Far from being the unknown story about Mao, the book is a farrago of gossip, hearsay, insults and lies.
All too many of Chang and Halliday's sources are "interviews recorded with Mao's relatives, friends, and acquaintances, done in the 1960s, unpublished." As Professor Michael Yahuda noted in the Guardian of 4 June 2005, "There is no discussion of the quality of the sources or how they were used. The motives of people in general and of Mao in particular are asserted rather than evaluated." There is no economic, social or political evidence or analysis, just repeated abuse.
Some of the writers, Nicholas Kristof, for example, note Mao's successes: "Land reform in China ... helped lay the groundwork for prosperity today. The emancipation of women ... moved China from one of the worst places in the world to be a girl to one where women have more equality than in, say, Japan or Korea. Indeed, Mao's assault on the old economic and social structure made it easier for China to emerge as the world's new economic dragon."
As Frank McLynn wrote of Chang and Halliday's book in the Independent on Sunday of 5 June 2005, "this one-sided rant leaves one with no understanding of modern China ... There is a lot of bad history in all senses in this volume. ... "why bother with the tiresome discipline of historical research when you can make wild assertions buttressed by unknown or suspect oral sources that are (in the authors' recurrent mantra) `little known today'. ... If you can believe that Chou-en-lai, the master diplomat who wowed everyone from Kissinger to Orson Welles, really was a hypermasochistic craven nonentity who played lickspittle and toady to Mao for no apparent reason (at least the authors do not suggest one) ... this book has a certain entertainment value. But it is neither serious history nor serious biography."